Throneum — Oh Death... Oh Death... Determinate, Preach and Le
If the Grateful Dead were at the heart of Lord of Chaos instead of Mayhem, Throneum would be the project. Playing more like a jam band than a metal band, Oh Death seems to meander in many directions, and that's very ok. A bit more musically in line than the likes of Abruptum, Throneum enjoy shifting directions and eschewing typical black metal. This is a great approach to break up the typically thick and fuzzy soup that is often associated with underground black metal (there's even a piano instrumental). As for the metallic bits, you get your standard riffage of fuzzed out guitars behind fuzzed out recordings, pummeling drums, and vocals that sound like they were recorded in the hallway a few studios over. Pretty fun, but pretty worn out at this point. The troublesome parts of this album come in the form of direction and execution. While I appreciate some sort of jam/freeform expression, the song structures here aren't loose enough to be free and aren't tight enough to be really acceptable; they're kind of in limbo. This could be, though, due to the riffs and lines feeling not very inspired and somewhat unthoughtfully constructed, like notes designed at random. That is enough to eclipse the experimental merits of this album, and is only intensified on the piano/synth tracks. Oh Death feels more like a debut album than a release by a band with nearly twenty years under its belt.
Troublesome with a pinch of fun, Oh Death... Oh Death... Determinate, Preach and Lead Us Astray... is six songs that feel like twelve. With many releases to their credit, it's hard to place whether this one doesn't connect due to musicianship, overemphasis on experimentation, or something else all together. With this as my first encounter with Throneum, I don't have a basis to qualify the last statement, but I do know that this one misses far more than it hits.